Tuesday March 27th: Weather

I think I'll start doing more blogs as opposed to making the 5day forecasts everyday.  It will be a bit easier to talk about a bigger area.  Last night, much of northern Virginia sunk below freezing.  Tonight won't be quite as cold, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some scattered, patchy frost in some of the sheltered northern valleys.  Wednesday will be another warm day before a cold front sags through the region.  This front looks pretty weak, but a few showers and thunderstorms should pop up during the afternoon and evening hours.  There could maybe be an isolated strong storm or too, but nothing looks too impressive at this time.  The front will clear things out, paving the way for high pressure to take over the rest of the week.  Thursday and Friday will be a bit cooler than what we've seen here lately, but should end up right around average for this time of year.  Temperatures should be right around the 50s/60s range.  There could be a few more showers on Saturday, especially across the southern portion of the state as a low pressure slides off the coast.  Once again, this doesn't look like a big deal either.  I'm going to go ahead and jump ahead to the east coast storm threat for next week.  Before, it had looked like an April 1st/2nd event, but that has been pushed back to April 5th-7th.  If you have been following me at all on facebook, you know how against the chance of seeing snow I have been, unless you head into the higher elevations of New England north of I90.  South of there, I simply do not think there is even a chance.  Some of the even more well known METs are still holding onto the chance that a major east coast storm will be able to pull in enough cold air that areas south of the Mason Dixon line could even see snow.  Let's look at the threat the 00z Euro from last night is showing:

Here's the 00z Euro 850mb map at 240 hours (silly enough in itself) for Thursday, April 5th.  I highlighted the freezing line at 850mb in red.  This shows where the atmosphere would be capable of producing snow.  That I can agree with, but people are forgetting we will be in early April, not early February.  I'm going to go through every reason why snow is not going to happen south of the mason dixon line.

1)  Besides how warm it has been over the past month, it is going to be very warm leading up to this storm as well! The southeast ridge is going to be well Monday(April 2nd) and Tuesday (April 3rd), as you can see in the 00z Euro below.  Temperatures will likely reach at least 70, if not 80 for much of Virginia, and even up to near the Mason Dixon line.  Sure, strong coastal storms can produce their own cold air.  But with having none in place, and it being early Spring, it's not going to happen.

2)  Ok, I showed the 850 mb temperatures at the beginning of this blog that showed the atmosphere was cold enough to produce snow.  So how about the surface temperatures?  Here are the 00z Euro surface temperatures for the same hour as the 850mb map..  Cold air in the upper levels is great, but when the surface is this warm,  youre only getting a plain, cold rain.

3) Final reason, as I sorta hinted at earlier, this is the Euro at 240 hours.  I remember a few days ago being very against the people who were hinting at snow on April fools.  Look what happened to that threat...poof.  I think the euro is a bit extreme in what its even showing, and that the gfs seems to be more aligned in my thinking (which is just a moderate low tracking to our north, providing us with showers from its trailing cold front).  Even if I'm wrong about that, its rain for us either way..end of discussion. -hv